


Headspace (And Time Marches On)

by whittler_of_words



Category: Homestuck
Genre: All Ships Implied, Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, And Everything Is Made Much More Painful For Everyone, But We Don't Talk About Her, Except Condesce, Gen, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Where The Vantas Mutation Goes Beyond Blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-11
Updated: 2014-06-11
Packaged: 2018-02-04 05:20:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1766992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whittler_of_words/pseuds/whittler_of_words
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Get up,</i> Porrim whispers in your head, and you groan. Maybe if you pretend you can’t hear her...</p>
<p>
  <i>Kankri, <b>please!</b></i>
</p>
<p>Her voice is desperate and raw. It’s like a slap directly to your brain, and you bolt up immediately. </p>
<p>You can hear Psii crying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Headspace (And Time Marches On)

_Get up,_ Porrim whispers in your head, and you groan. You’re so tired. Just five more minutes. Then you’ll get up and do whatever it is she wants you to do.

_Kanny!_

Maybe if you pretend you can’t hear her...

_Kankri, **please!**_

Her voice is desperate and raw. It’s like a slap directly to your brain, and you bolt up immediately. 

You can hear Psii crying.

The brightness of the cell sends you reeling, until you manage to regain your equilibrium. The fog of sleep -- no, more like unconsciousness -- has already mostly left you, and with the bone-deep ache of each bruise left on your skin, dread sinks into your gut. Your shoulders ache. Your everything aches. It’s nothing compared to the turmoil happening in your own head.

“ _FUCK!_ ” Mituna says, with your own voice, “ _fuck fuck fuckking shit grubfdamn b-bulgeslurpingg--_ ” You manage to stop him, biting your tongue until you taste blood, and you ignore his string of _sorry ssorry fucking sorry pleathe_ running through your head. In any other situation you would be soothing him, whispering reassuring words to calm him down, but now is not the time.

It might not ever be the time.

“Signless, oh thank the Allmother, you’re awake.” Rosa’s voice is weighted with relief, hands grasping at the bars of her cell across the room. There is jade crusted into her hair. You’re a coward for being glad that the angle of the light means you can’t see her face.

“Where’s--”

Rosa nods her head sharply to her right, and your eyes flit to the cell next to hers. The torches illuminate that cell much more clearly than hers, as well as the one next to it, and you can see Psii and Disciple huddled as far from the brightness as they can get. You’re surprised the light hasn’t bothered you much, yet. Or, you would be, if you couldn’t still feel Porrim’s presence in the back of your head. You don’t need a mirror to know that your eyes look green. 

“Dis? Psii?”

“I’m alright,” Disciple answers. Her voice wavers, from exhaustion or pain or something else, but she continues before you can contemplate it much. “They put him on psionic suppressants. Bastards.”

He’s drugged, then. Damn. He hasn’t said anything, but you can still hear him crying; muffled, soft sounds, and it burns you to know that you can’t get to him, hold him. You can’t hold any of them. 

“How are you?” Rosa presses her face to the bars, and you scoot forward, getting as close as your own cell will allow. 

“Fine,” you say. Your body prickles as it always does after Damara has her go with her psionics, setting needles under every inch of your skin. Your wrists burn where they’re bound behind your back, tight enough that the blood-flow is almost completely restricted but not quite. Twin lines of fire on your skin, as if in reference to what you know awaits you, to what was described to you in detail after gory detail. Rosa gives you a long, steadily disbelieving look. “Really, I am. Nothing I can’t deal with.”

She doesn’t press. You think it’s because she knows it wouldn’t make much difference, whether you’re really fine or not. Not now. You’ve been captured, like you thought you’d somehow manage to avoid, like you’d hoped would never pass, and now. Now there’s nothing to do but wait.

And wait.

You don’t lose track of the time. Damara supplies each second with a strange, quiet sense of solemnity that you’ve never felt from her before. You ask her if she’ll help you again, to break all of your bonds, or to break out. To do _something._

_No,_ she replies. _Psii not only one drugged. Stupid fool._

For a few seconds you are overcome with a wave of vertigo, violent and disorienting enough that, in moments, you’re flat on your side, jarring your shoulders, leaving you breathless. It’s gone as quickly as it came. 

_Are you keeping me from feeling this? Is that what you’re feeling right now?_

She doesn’t respond, but you know the answer all the same. You curse, not bothering to hide it under your breath.

Six hours, twelve minutes, and nine seconds later, Disciple hisses, “Someone’s coming.”

The door to the room opens smooth as a dream, with not a creak to be heard, and the silence emphasizes the sound of high heels on concrete. 

_That beach,_ Meenah says, not quite a snarl, _I neva thought I’d see that face again._

The Empress of Alternia swaggers up to your cell, and grins.

“Whale, whale, whale,” she muses. Her hands are empty of a weapon, but that means nothing. “If it ain’t the little mutant-blood. Hope you had fun with your revolution while it lasted, buoy, ‘cause that’s all you’re eva gonna get.” Her smile is made of shark teeth. “Not many prisoners get the honor of me coming to visit them, you minnow. I’m certainly gonna have fun with your little fronds once I’m through with you.”

You purse your lips, saying nothing. The room is dead-silent, tension hanging heavy in the air. Even Meenah is quiet, although you can still feel her anger ringing through your head, making your lips want to curl into a sneer of their own accord. You keep them pressed firmly flat.

Her Imperious Condescension carries on, ignoring your silence completely. “I heard a few rumours, of course. Some hear-sea about how this travelling preacher not only had mutant blood, but pretty little powers, too. Somethin’ about ghosts and shit. Guess they weren’t just rumours after all, were they.” 

Her eyes narrow when you say nothing, and the air around her changes.

“You betta answer me, you know,” she says softly. “Else things can get reeel nasty for these fronds of yours, for shore.”

You blink. The Condesce stiffens slightly, and when you speak, the accent is not your own.

“What tha shell do you want, you old seawitch?” 

_Meenah, what do you think you’re--_

_Chillax, you old geezer, I got this ship. Me an’ her just need to have a little talk._

You try to push Meenah back, to regain control, but she holds on tight. Even in death she’s strong. Too strong for you to overpower her. Rosa hisses softly.

“Tyrian,” Condesce observes, taking note of the color your eyes must have taken. “Interesting. And how did you manage to get your mitts on one of my heiresses?”

“Like he’s gonna tell you,” Meenah spits. “And neither am I. Answer my question. Are you gonna try and krill me again or what.”

“Again? You’re gonna have to elaborayte, gill, I krilled a lot of heiresses in my life.”

“Oh, reely?” Meenah’s voice is saccharine, and you know what she’s going to say before the words leave your mouth. “Does the name _Beforus_ ring any bells?”

There is a few seconds of silence.

And then the Concesce laughs.

“Yeah, yeah!” she says, still laughing. “I rememba you now! Little miss guppy-gills! You put up a fight, I’ll give ya that. Still didn’t stop me from slaughtering you and your praycious group of pacifists. _Beforus_.” Condesce sighs out the name with contentment. “That was certainly a fun mess to clean up. It was worth all the books we had to burn.”

_“You--”_

_That’s **enough.**_

Meenah’s anger is enough of a distraction for you to be able to throw her off, regain control of your body again. Condesce looks almost disappointed.

“Whale, that explains a lot,” she sighs. “If any of the Beforus treehuggers are shackin’ up with you I guess it makes sense.The old goat is gonna get a laugh outta this.” She contemplates you a moment, head tilted to the side. Every angle of her is sleek and dangerous and sharp. “You would’a made a nice little soldier. All those gifts wrapped in one. Guess it wasn’t meant to be, though. What a shame.” 

A shiver runs down your spine at the implication of her words. Rosa is gripping the bars of her cell tightly, when you glance back at her, all of the blood drained from her face. Your attention jerks back to Condesce when she flips back her hair in a long, sweeping motion.

“But the guppy was right aboat one thing. I didn’t come down here just to chit-chat. I got a present for you that will make tonight’s show much more _entertaining_.”

_“You stay away from him,”_ Rosa snarls. _“Don’t you dare touch him or--”_

“You know as well as me that you can’t do shit, gill,” Condesce says. She doesn’t look away from your face. Her eyes are narrowed, her expression cold in contrast to the flippant tone of her voice. “So just sit back and enjoy the show.”

She reaches forward, down, slowly through the bars. You scoot back ineffectually, your back hitting the wall in your attempt to escape the reach of her long, long arm. Burning cold fingers caress your cheek. Her nails dig into your skin.

**Click.**

“Signless!” You hear Disciple call out, but you are gone, gone, gone, sucked deep into the sudden storm of your own head. There is too much, too many, you’ve never had more than two of them riding with you at once but now there are all eleven crammed into a space that was meant for only one; you can hear them all -- hear Rufioh and Aranea and Meulin and Horrus, Kurloz, Cronus, Latula, all of them scared and hurting and screaming and you think you’re screaming, too, wherever your body is, you can’t tell which way is up or down or sideways, can’t tell who is in control of your body, whether anyone is. Can’t tell where you and them separate.

You hear a laugh. You hear voices, high, and panicked. You hear your/Kanny’s/the geezer’s name but can not find your voice, can not find anything.

You imagine what waits for you, out there, and how now you will feel it with twelve minds instead of just one, and how they are caught up in this, how they will die (again) with you, how they will suffer. 

You (all of you) are terrified.

Damara, quietly, through the haze of drugs she can no longer hide from you, through the thoughts of eleven other minds none of you can stop or shut out, counts down the time. 

Hour, by minute, by second.

**Author's Note:**

> we interrupt your unscheduled broadcast of radio silence to bring you: this shit.
> 
> i don't know if i'm gonna go any further with this au. i don't need another longfic, so in all probability, yeah, i will go further with this au eventually.
> 
> stay frosty, my friends.


End file.
